Through my cervix. Yep, you heard right, my unborn daughter who I was supposed to deliver vaginally after being breech for months, stuck her hand through my cervix to give my doctor a high-five. Thanks a lot tiny human. We had to move to an immediate C-section crashing my hopes of an ideal delivery.
This is my birth story. Let me back up by saying I have two healthy, beautiful children and we debated about when to have a third. We waited, and waited until we were mentally ready for another roller coaster ride called pregnancy. Despite being high risk due to incompetent cervix which the medical world now calls insufficient cervix; my pregnancy was smooth sailing. (I guess cervices everywhere filed suits of defamation of character.)
By my seventh month of pregnancy, I knew my baby (gender unknown) had flipped, pushing its head right into my ribs. Such a weird sensation! Then weird turned to frustration because baby wasn’t rotating head down as the weeks flew by. I was doing yoga, laying up-side-down, doing the Webster technique at the chiropractor and even putting a cold bag of peas on my baby’s head. None of which was successful. My husband walked into our bedroom one evening to find me playing classical music to my crotch. Yep, that didn’t work either. So at 37 weeks, I decided to allow my doctor to try to flip the baby manually. No drugs. What the &*$# was I thinking. NO PERSON SHOULD EVER ALLOW THIS PROCEDURE TO BE DONE WITHOUT DRUGS. Excruciating pain, tears, screaming, stubborn baby and tense abdomen muscles did not allow this to happen. So we set a date at 39 weeks for a C-section. I did not want a C-section knowing that I had two small children to take care of at home.
A few days before my scheduled C-section, I starting going into labor. Once there my doctor and I mutually decided to try to flip the baby again as a last ditch effort, this time with DRUGS. They used all their strength to flip the baby and I only felt a little bit of pressure. Amazing. I was feeling so great and the flip was working! I was so excited to get back into my room to deliver vaginally like I had wanted from the beginning and then…my doctor says, “Oh no, we are going to have to do a C-section. Baby just stuck its hand through your cervix.” Say what!? Well, can’t you just stick it back in!!? Just shove that little hand back in! Well, apparently it wasn’t that easy and they rushed to put the drapes up, and prep me for an immediate C-section. My husband was there all gowned up with his camera at the ready.
This was not how I wanted my baby’s first pictures to be taken. With me on a table with an annoying nasal cannula up my nose, hair net and tears. About five minutes in I hear, “She is beautiful!” It was a girl. The nurse took her vitals then wrapped her up and handed her to my husband. If there was a bright side to having a C-section, it was that my husband was able to instantly bond with our daughter in an amazing way. That I was grateful for and it took away all other thoughts about how awful being stuck on an operating table was. I was in the operating room a lot longer because we had also decided to have my tubes tied. So I asked my anesthesiologist if they were almost done. She replies, “They are getting ready to put your uterus back in.” WHAT!? My uterus is OUTSIDE OF MY BODY? Oh, my gosh, breathe. Breathe. That freaked me out so much that I had a panic attack and the visual in my head was haunting. Just throw that thing back in and get me the heck out of here! Where’s my daughter, focus on my daughter and my husband. It’s almost over. FINALLY, they gave the all clear- all medical devices were accounted for and I was stitched closed.
I’ve heard some major horror stories about emergency cesareans and I’m grateful that mine was not a life or death situation. I had a healthy 8lb, 8 oz. baby girl with a great story I’ll break out at her graduation party.
I only have one thing to say about recovering from a cesarean. COMPRESSION UNDERWEAR. Yes, they are seriously amazing. They are the only thing that made me feel like my uterus was not going to fall out that first week. RUN and go buy them NOW even if you are not planning on having a cesarean.
So that was my birth story and it was far from what I had envisioned in my mind, but in the end the unpleasant memories fade and the beautiful memories are captured on my camera. And thank goodness because now that I’m a mom of three I barely remember a damn thing! Now where did I just put my coffee?
